LO 6: Randomness

The Computer Composer game, which is featured on the website of The Mathenæum, allows you to choose to generate a short musical composition with the assistance of a computer. For every input of notes and rhythms, you can either manually input values or choose to have the computer randomly assign them for you. It is interesting to see the limitations of randomness within music; for example, this program specifically only writes in C major or A natural minor, which eliminates 5 of the possible notes in each octave. It is also limited to one and a half octaves, as opposed to the 7 usually present on a piano. Compositionally, the creation of rhythms is always much more variable, as is the case even more clearly in this program.